flanks perforated with rock-tombs, and its projecting ledges affording as wild and desolate a prospect eastwards as though one was in the heart of the Sahara. Here a wady about three miles long, with a bed half a mile wide of white sand, is enclosed by an amphitheatre of limestone rock, rent with fissures, and rising into fantastic crags and pinnacles. If we scramble up the steep shoulder, which is covered with the mounds of an ancient Egyptian town, and enter the first cave we come to, we find that the outer chamber is about 40 feet square. Beyond it is a second smaller one, and in the floor is a hole just large enough to admit a man. Upon the rock by the side of this hole, on the occasion of my visit, was a heap of the guano of bats and a piece of rope. Upon asking the Sheikh el Beled, who had accompanied us, the meaning of this, he said that a man was at that moment in the bowels of the mountain collecting guano, and that the hole was an entrance to subterranean corridors in which you might journey for hours. As it occurred to me that they might lead to chambers or tombs used by the ancients as yet undiscovered, I insisted, in spite of much opposition, in being lowered into the chasm-a proceed ing which did not altogether suit Mohammed, though he was ashamed to manifest any reluctance to assist me in exploring these subterranean regions. It was scarcely necessary to have taken the trouble to tie the rope under my armpits, as I had only begun to swing freely in the darkness, and had hardly been let down twenty feet, when I touched bottom. Then Mohammed was lowered down, and then a couple of candles. We had scarcely lighted these when a wild-looking bearded creature, with nothing on but a rag, made his appearance, looking

very scared at our apparition, crawling towards us on hands and knees out of the gloom. We were glad to have him for a guide, and told him to turn round and lead the way. For the first twenty yards or so we were obliged to crawl, but after this the passage became about 6 feet high and 3 feet wide. It was evidently a natural rift in the rock, and I soon began to despair of finding anything. However, I went on until I was literally overpowered and driven back by the bats. They charged us in dense whirring battalions, banging into one's face, putting out the candles, thumping on one's head, and creating as much draught as if a fanning-machine was at work. At the same time, the pungent odour of the guano was becoming overpowering-it was as though one was being corked up in a bottle of sal-ammoniac-and made my nose and eyes smart, to say nothing of the unpleasantness of inhaling it. I had now paced the distance from the entrance-hole, and found it to be a hundred yards. The guide assured me that it was half-way to the end of the passage, and that there were no other corridors or chambers of any sort, but plenty more bats. I therefore decided to beat a retreat, and had to stand another charge from them as they flew back to their innermost recesses finally regaining the earth's surface, to the great relief of the Sheikh el Beled, who seemed to think that some disaster was certain to happen to me, for which he would have been held personally responsible. Passing round the shoulder of the cliff, and scrambling up the face of the rock, we now came to another grotto, on one side of the floor of which was a carved figure in a flowing robe, standing before something which is supposed to be an altar, and holding in one hand what may

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possibly be some twigs, and in the other what, for anything that appears to the contrary, may be incense; but all this requires an effort of imagination to decide. On the other side is a snake, probably the Uræus serpent of Horus, twined round a staff. One is forcibly reminded by it of the serpent of brass which Moses made and set upon a pole, thus probably appealing to an emblem with which the Israelites were familiar, when they were called upon by an act of faith to believe in its healing power. In like manner Aaron, when he yielded to the solicitations of the people "to make them gods which should go before them," adopted the one with which both he and his countrymen were most familiar, the golden calf or the holy sun-bull of Osiris, which was worshipped at Heliopolis, where Moses himself, in his younger days, had been a priest. This bull, Mnenis, is represented in the Egyptian paintings as being in gold,* and was undoubtedly identical with the golden calves, the worship of which King Jeroboam established in Bethel and in Dan after his return from his sojourn in Egypt-saying, as he did so, Behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt" (1 Kings xii. 28). There can be little doubt, could we only read them aright, that these stones of Egypt contain many interesting sermons. Over the door of this same tomb is the winged dise of Horus, under which emblem he represents the resurrection of the dawn from darkness. Within were twenty figures in a more or less perfect state of preservation. Some of them were so mutilated that it was impossible to discover for whom they were intended; but among the least destroyed were recognisable Isis giving sustenance

to Horus, Anubis, Thoth, and one or two others. At the back of the rock in which these tombs are situated is a tablet on which are sculptured two figures, apparently in Roman attire, holding horses. Passing from the isolated rock to the main cliff, we observe upon its face the representation of Rameses III. receiving the falchion from Savak, to which I have already referred as being apparently identical with the one I had found at Kom el Kafara; but here there is no corresponding inscription of his name in full as at the latter place.

In the face of the cliff on the opposite side of the gorge, and not far from a collection of hovels appropriated to the residence of a small Copt population, is a grotto with a pylon façade carved out of the rock. Here there were evidently granite columns on each side of the door, but of these only one remains. Within is a procession of deities very much resembling those in the cave before mentioned, and over the door is the representation of a ship. The traces of hieroglyphics remain on the door-jambs, but they are too much effaced to be decipherable. Indeed the nature of the rock is not such as to resist the ravages of time and the ignorant peasantry. This grotto is approached by a flight, of fourteen rock-cut steps, that rise out of the débris which conceal the rest. It seems that there is a superstition among the Copts that a visit by a newly married couple to this cave will exercise a beneficial influence upon their married life.

Over another rough-hewn cave is an inscription in Greek, which runs as follows: "For the welfare of King Ptolemy, the god Epiphanes, the great Eucharistes, Acoris the son of Ergeus to Isis, Mochias,

Soteira." When we had exhausted the sights of Tehneh, we adjourned to the yard-it could hardly be considered a house-of the Sheikh el Beled, to drink what he called coffee. While we partook of his detestable beverage, he informed us that he, together with all the male population of the village, with the exception of the Copts, were Bedouin Arabs of the Beni Aughba tribe, who had emigrated from the Hejaz, not far from Mecca, about 150 years ago. He said they had lived here in tents at first, but finally decided upon building houses and becoming sedentary. They had no objection to taking wives from the fellahin, but would not allow their own women to marry peasants. They seemed rather proud of the high degree of civilisation they had attained, and especially of having acquired a strongly developed taste for backsheesh.

Following the range northwards, we reach in about two miles another gorge, with another amphitheatre of limestone cliffs, some more grottoes in the rock, the mounds of a small ancient town, the traces of a wall which once defended the pass from desert incursions, and two wretched native villages picturesquely huddled among the rocks, containing a squalid population of what Mohammed called "mixings," by which he meant mingled Moslems and Copts. I only entered four or five of the rock-tombs here, but in none of them were there any inscriptions. In the largest were a couple of mummy-pits filled with rubbish to within about six feet from the surface. They had evidently been despoiled of their contents, much to Mohammed's disgust, who always manifested the keenness of a sleuth-hound when it became the question of a search for what he called "dead men's boxes." The most interesting ruin in this place

was that of the wall which extended from the base of a precipitous rock on one side of the gorge to that of one on the other, a distance of about a third of a mile. The modern villages were built of the crude bricks of which it had been composed, and the only trace left is a long mound of dried mud and brickbats. There is no indication of its having been prolonged in either direction, or of having formed part of that built by the Queen Delooka

unless, indeed, she built it in patches across the different gorges which debouch into the Nile valley. That the object of this one was to protect the small town, the mounds of which still remain within its enceinte, was very evident. It is to be inferred from the way in which all these ravines were fortified, that the nomad population who in old time peopled the desert between the Nile and the Red Sea, were far more predatory and warlike in their habits than those who now range over these sandy wastes.

Floating rapidly down with the stream beneath the beetling cliffs of the Jebel Teyr, with the Coptic monastery of Deyr el Adra perched upon its dizzy edge, we pass the grandest bit of Nile scenery between Cairo and Siout, and where the range recedes from the river at the Wady ed Deyr, approach another most interesting and rarely visited spot. The river here bends away to the westward past Semaloot and Golosaneh, leaving a small shallow branch to follow its old course, thus forming a large island. If we leave our dahabeeya at the latter place, a cruise of a little more than an hour with a fresh breeze in a small boat, takes us to the retired village of Surarieh, nestling amid its palm-groves; and just beyond it a spur from the limestone ridge comes down to the river, rounding which we find ourselves on the

mounds of an old city. This time it is thoroughly ancient Egyptian. Here is no waste of potsherds to indicate that at some later date it was built upon by the Greeks or Romans; the tumuli are all formed of crude brick, out of which crops the straw by which it was formerly cemented. Here, too, are traces of the old wall defending the gorge ; and round its southern shoulder we come upon range after range of quarry, the mountain looking as if it had been cut out in square wedges like a cheese. At the base of some rocks half hidden with sand, two black holes appear, evidently grottoes, and we have to cross half a mile of desert to get to them. Crawling in upon hands and knees, we find one to contain three small rock-cut chambers without inscriptions. Climbing over the rock in which they are hewn, we are startled by what at first seems a temple of great dimensions standing out in solitary grandeur on the waste of sand. It is a solid mass of hewn rock, the ground plan of which at present is somewhat of an L-shape, but which appears to be all that has escaped being blasted away of a huge square portico which had originally been pierced from back to front and from side to side, each of the existing sides having an immense portal about 25 feet wide and as many in height. The elevation of the rock, which has been roughly hewn, is about 40 feet, and the length of the longest side 33 yards. Its sides bear the marks of recent blasting; and some quarrying which was apparently being now prosecuted, though there were no workmen visible, revealed the white cleanly cut limestone rock extending for about 6 feet down into the sand. It is probable, therefore, that if its base was cleared, the meaning of this monument would become apparent. There is

no inscription or carving upon it; but that it was fashioned with design out of the rock in situ, seems to me probable. Just opposite to this mass, a large square cave has been hollowed out of the range, and the fragment of a gigantie column, about 4 feet long, which had been carved out of the living rock, depends from the roof at the entrance; the rest of it has been blasted away in modern times. The view from the interior of this cave, with the great impending mass above, the carved rock beyond, and the Nile valley seen in the distance through its portal, was altogether unique. As I was looking at it, a pair of wild geese that had made their nest in a hole in the rock just over my head, flew away with loud cries; they were as startled as I was by our unexpected proximity. I now went in search of the temple which Lepsius mentions, and the existence of which does not appear to have been known prior to his visit. It is situated within a hundred yards of the rock gateway, and cut out of the ledge of rock upon which the latter stands. According to Lepsius, the hieroglyphics upon its walls state that it was dedicated by Menepthah, the son of Rameses II., and the king under whom the exodus of the Jews took place, to the Egyptian Venus (Hathor). The three colossal figures in the niche at the end of the temple were too mutilated to tell much of a tale, but the small ones at the sides were more distinct. I was not sufficiently an Egyptologist, unfortunately, to discover the meaning of the legend which these eight or ten kings, gods and goddesses, by their various attitudes, mean to convey. Lepsius says that further on are groups of tombs which have hitherto received scarcely any notice, though from their extreme antiquity they are

peculiarly interesting. The sun was blazing with such intensity upon the desert on the day of my visit, that I was obliged to abandon the idea of prosecuting my examination of the range any further; but the quarry trended away to the eastward for a long distance. On the side of the rock near the temple, the omnipresent Rameses III. has cut his ovals, and has again represented himself in close confabulation with the crocodile-headed god Savak. Standing on the top of the rock, and facing the quarry, I had occasion to call to Mohammed, and was startled by hearing his name returned in a loud and marvellously distinct echo. He and the Reis were so delighted with the phenomenon, that they continued to experiment upon it for some time. In the village of Surarieh is a modern tomb of some pretensions, erected to a certain Sheikh Halid, of the Bedawee sect of dervishes, who was SO celebrated for his sanctity, that though he died only a few years ago, his tomb has already become a spot to which pilgrimages are annually made. Near here I met a very ancient dame whose necklace attracted my attention; it was composed of beads found in the mounds, all of ancient Egyptian workmanship. Although they were the collection of a lifetime, I induced her to part with them for a consideration. Beyond this I did not succeed in obtaining any antiquities from the peasants, though I think it highly probable, from the extremely ancient character of the mounds, that they would reward excavation. To the north of Surarieh are the mounds of other towns, and quarries and tombs in the range, especially in the neighbourhood of Sheikh Hassan.

All this region is deserving of a more thorough examination than it has yet received, but I was unable at

the time to prosecute my researches any further in this direction.

One of the largest landed proprietors, and at the same time the most influential magnate at Minieh, told us that his country-house, which was situated on the eastern bank of the river a little higher up, was surrounded by many objects of interest, and not merely invited us to pay it a visit, but offered to lend us his dahabeeya for further explorations up the river. We were delighted to accept his hospitality, and started one morning in his handsomely equipped boat for his estate. It was only about three miles above the Coptic village we had already visited, and we arrived early in the day, and were received at the entrance to the handsome gardens belonging to our host, and which extended to the river-bank. They consisted of groves of oranges and lemons, of trellises covered with vines, of acres of figs, pomegranates, apricots, and peaches, the whole overshadowed by date-trees, and in the midst of them a square summer kiosk, with a handsome central hall and sleeping-apartments at each angle, decorated with furniture of Parisian mode. Here donkeys were assembled for the conveyance of the party to a gorge in the mountain, in which was ancient quarry. We rode between the precipitous cliffs until the ravine ended in an amphitheatre, in the centre of which was a cave, the entrance to which was about fifty feet wide. It was not more than thirty feet deep by twenty across, and at its farther end was a niche with an old Christian painting above it. It had evidently been used, like the church at Deyr el Nasara, as a place of worship, but was now not only abandoned but defaced by quarryings still in progress-two pilasters by which it had been ornamented having quite recently

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